Arsenal in the Charity Shield – an update

Rather oddly, Arsenal.com doesn’t actually acknowledge that Arsenal are playing in the Community Shield this summer.

Or maybe we are not? Has it been cancelled? Details of the date are how it fits into the calendar are at the end of this piece.

I was pondering this point when I remembered that the article here hasn’t been updated for a while, so here is an update of the article on Arsenal and the Community Shield that appeared here I’ve added details of all the games we have played, and how our record compares to others. Other articles relevant are listed at the end.

But to begin at the start….

On 8 October 1930: Arsenal won the Charity Shield beating Sheffield Wednesday 2-1 in front of a crowd of 25,000 at Stamford Bridge. It was Arsenal’s first appearance in the annual match, and started a run of five wins in the 1930s.

The team for the first match was

Keyser

Parker Hapgood

Seddon Roberts John

Hulme Brain Lambert Jack Bastin

Hulme and Jack were the scorers.

Indeed this match wasn’t just the start of a good run in the 30s – Arsenal have won the shield in each of the following years:

The Community Shield came out of an earlier competition which started out in 1899 as a professionals vs amateurs annual cup. After the amateurs had a falling out with the FA there was a change over to the winners of the Football League playing the winners of the Southern League. As such Herbert Chapman got an early taste of the competition, when Northampton Town became champions of the Southern League for the first and only time under Chapman in 1909 and so went on to the Charity Shield match.

The idea of Cup winners v Champions started in 1921 but it was not consistently in this format until 1930. But even since there have been times when it has not been played in this way. In 1950 England played an “FA XI”, in 1961 Tottenham having won the double played the FA XI again.

In 1971 after winning the double Arsenal had a real problem. So unlikely had a cup or league win seemed earlier in the season, they had arranged a pre-season tour – and were unable to break the contract. So Liverpool played Leicester!!!

This set a trend and the following year both Derby (league champions) and Leeds (FA Cup winners) refused to play so Man City played Villa for no apparent reason. I also don’t know why Derby and Leeds refused to play – if you do, please tell.

Then, with the FA in its usual state of incompetence and disrepute, in 2002 the Charity Commission found that Football Association had failed to meet its fairly basic and obvious legal obligations under the Charities Act as it failed to say where the money was going, and had regularly delayed paying out anything at all. Instead of being honourable and sorting out the mess, the FA did what we might expect: it simply renamed the trophy the Community Shield. Arsenal were the first winners.

The highest scoring game was Man U 8 Swindon 4 – with the money going to the Titanic Disaster fund.

Here are all the Charity and Community Shield games Arsenal have played in…

1930 Arsenal 2 Sheffield W 1 at Stamford Bridge

1931: Arsenal 1 WBA 0 at Villa Park

1933: Arsenal 3 Everton 0 – at Goodison. From here on there was no much logic as to which club got home advantage.

And below is the list of winners and appearances for the top clubs. Below these select few the numbers get rather small and full of sides we wouldn’t expect to be there such as the “English Professional XI” (4 wins and 2 runners’ up).

Club

Appearances

Wins

Last match won

Manchester United

29

20

2013

Liverpool

21

15

2006

Arsenal

19

12

2004

Everton

11

9

1995

Tottenham Hotspur

9

7

1991

Chelsea

10

4

2009

Manchester City

9

4

2012

The Community Shield this year (2014) will be played, if indeed it is played at all, on 10 August 2014 at Wembley. That is under one month after the World Cup Final and nine days before the first leg of the play off matches for the Champions League.